Based on her performance at the Banff Center in Canada 21 Objects of Hesitation (2013), over the past few years visual artist Helen Cho explored the materiality of ceramics in relation to her experience of ‘diaspora’ and Korean roots. Especially for the exhibition at Onomatopee she delved into the core material of the earth, clay, to contemplate and explore the notions of moving closer to oneself and one’s external world. Cho re-imagines herself with a series of new objects, videos, photographs, and a performance that will offer an insight into the symbolic value and of the poetics of art object making today.

Helen Cho is a Korean-Canadian artist based in Toronto, Canada. Her artistic practice consists out of various mediums such as poetry, sculpture, drawing, video and performance. Cho shows, both in the physical sense and the manifestation of that, a poignant desire for “object” and “image” making. Highly aware of the complexity of representation of objects, their material, and the prosaic yet seductive qualities of mass-produced materiality gain her attention. Cho’s artistic practice contemplates modest gestures and rituals. Narratives are suggested in seemingly trivial artefacts, locations and transactions of everyday life making her work subtle, sensitive yet outspokenly ‘necessary’. Her current project explores the approachability and allusiveness of ceramics that exists between arts and craft, but also in the artistic, the domestic, and between sheer object- making and performance. Cho researches the traditional medium on its merits to past and future as the terracotta material shows both strength and fragility.

A Republic of Art is an exhibition about the world of visual art in the French Republic from the establishment of the FRAC system in 1982 right up to current developments in contemporary art today. These 23 FRACs were to span the entire country. Each was empowered to fund, collect and exhibit contemporary living artists from France and beyond, thus providing the whole country with a uniquely ambitious and robust support system for the production of visual art in its own time.

The large-scale exhibition tells the story of art and the ambitious plans of the French state in collecting, organising and dispersing contemporary art in radically new ways.
Exhibition in the Van Abbemuseum
This exhibition takes place in the ten classical galleries of the old building of the Van Abbemuseum. Rather than simply exhibiting these more than 100 art works, the Van Abbemuseum will apply much of its own experimental thinking developed in exhibiting its own collection, which brings both art history and lived history together in provocative and exciting ways.
By looking at the collections of the FRAC from the perspective of cultural history, visitors will be able to compare their own memories and emotions of the past thirty years with the works of art that were made in that time. For some, a feast of recognition, a new acquaintance to others and a retrieval of memories. For others a sense of the power of history. But for all, because of the wealth of images, a ‘mer à boire’ for everyone.
Artists
Absalon, Agnès Accorsi, Dennis Adams, Lara Almarcegui, Yto Barrada, Bibliothèque Fantastique, Ursula Biemann, Dara Birnbaum, Monica Bonvicini, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Daniel Buren, Sophie Calle, Marta Caradec, Alex Chan, Henri Coldeboeuf, documentation céline duval, Jimmie Durham, Latifa Echakhch, Harun Farocki, Mounir Fatmi, Cao Fei, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Michel François, Claire Fontaine, Meschac Gaba, General Idea, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Renée Green, Subodh Gupta, Hans Haacke, Raymond Hains, Thomas Hirschhorn, Carsten Höller, Douglas Huebler, Pierre Huyghe, Bouchra Khalili, Matthieu Laurette, Louise Lawler, Paul McCarthy, Gustav Metzger, Antoni Muntadas, N55, Jean-Christophe Norman, Boris Ondreicka, ORLAN, Gabriel Orozco, Sener Özmen/Cengiz Tekin, Philippe Parreno, Yan Pei-Ming, Lili Reynaud Dewar, Gerhard Richter, Jimmy Robert, Bruno Serralongue, Cindy Sherman, Simon Starling, Jessica Stockholder, The Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Luc Tuymans, Ben Vautier, Huang Yong Ping, Chen Zhen.
E-publication A Republic of Art
The exhibition is accompanied by an e-publication with contributions by Ami Barak, Charles Esche, Annie Fletcher, Diana Franssen, Bernard de Montferrand, Le Peuple qui Manque, Stephen Wright and an interview with FRAC directors Catherine Elkar, Xavier Franceschi and Laurence Gateau.
Language: English and French. Publication date: June 2015. Managing editor: Lena Reisner. Design by 75b.
Assistent curator
Lena Reisner
Partners
A Republic of Art is organised in collaboration with PLATFORM, the umbrella organisation of the 23 FRACs in France.
FRAC advisory board: Catherine Elkar (director FRAC Bretagne), Xavier Franceschi (director FRAC Île de France), Laurence Gateau (director FRAC des Pays de la Loire), Anne-Claire Duprat (PLATFORM).